After two years of reporting in Gaza and Afghanistan, Elliott D. Woods is back in Egypt covering the protests and reporting on the trash collectors of the city for a feature story in the Virginia Quarterly Spring 2011 issue.
When I unzipped my rolling suitcase for the customs official at Cairo International Airport on Thursday night, February 3, a look of horror seized his face. “Koolu memnouaa,” he whispered to himself. “Everything is prohibited.”
I pretended not to understand and awaited his questions. Journalists coming into the country had involuntarily stocked up a warehouse of cameras, microphones, and satellite Internet devices at Cairo International, and the other journalists at baggage claim were joking that there would soon be a booming market in top-notch electronics at the backdoor of the airport. Nobody laughed much; that day had been a day of terror in Cairo, with more than twenty foreign journalists arrested “for their protection” by the Egyptian government, and with scores more harassed and beaten by thugs. I’d already heard from Nadia Shira Cohen that she’d had to hide in an Egyptian army tank to escape an angry mob. An Egyptian photographer was shot by a sniper and later died from his wounds, and two foreign reporters were stabbed.
Anti-government protesters fared worse—pro-Mubarak henchmen rained Molotov cocktails made from petrol cans down on them from rooftops and balconies surrounding Tahrir, and a group of thugs on horses and camels made a full-out cavalry charge on the crowds.
Read the entire dispatch at the Virginia Quarterly Review online >>